


Snowman

by paperstorm



Series: 12 Days of Stucky Christmas [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brooklyn, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Fluff, Gen, POV Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:41:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21637525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: Part 1 of the 12 Days of Stucky Christmas series. They build a snowman.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers
Series: 12 Days of Stucky Christmas [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559701
Comments: 22
Kudos: 52





	Snowman

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends! Welcome to a series of 12 Stucky Christmas ficlets. One will be posted per day from now until December 25th. They will span Stucky's whole canonical relationship, from childhood to pre-snap in Wakanda. Most will be fluffy, a few will be a bit sad, but all are based on Christmas-themed word-prompts I sourced from a few friends. I hope you enjoy, and happy holidays <3

_1925_  
  
It’s snowing. Not too weird, it’s December and it always snows in December. But it doesn’t snow like _this_. It doesn’t snow for hours and hours and hours, big fat flakes falling down from the sky forever and ever. Everything Steve can see is coated in white. The rooftops, the window-sills, the steps on the fire escape. On the sidewalk below, people walking are stumbling as they struggle to climb over snowbanks that must be taller than Steve. They probably aren’t taller than Bucky, but he’s big for his age. That’s what grown-ups always say. Steve is _just right_ for his age, is what Ma says in response when Steve complains about it.  
  
“Isn’t it magical?” she says, staring out the front window with Steve. Their breath makes clouds on the glass in front of their faces. Steve’s makes funny patterns, because his nose is pressed to the cold window for a better view.  
  
“Will it ever stop?” he asks. “Will it just keep piling up and up and up until it covers the doors and the windows and the whole building and we can’t get out?”  
  
“I doubt it.” Ma laughs. She reaches over and ruffles Steve’s hair. The strands, always messier than they should be, tumble into his eyes and he shakes his head to move them away. “But if it does, we’ll just have to wait in here until it melts.”  
  
“What about school tomorrow?”  
  
“If the snow was so high we were trapped in our homes, I think they’d cancel school, Bumblebee. But that isn’t very likely to happen.”  
  
Outside, a man slips and falls, landing right on his back in the snow. The lady with him helps him up, but she’s laughing, so it’s okay for Steve to laugh, too.  
  
“Can Bucky come over?” Steve asks.  
  
“Of course,” his Ma answers. “But bundle up before you go get him, you’ll catch your death in this storm.”  
  
Steve races to his bedroom. He pulls on a thick sweater, and wraps a scarf around his neck, and skids in his socks on the floor as he rushes to the closet for his coat. As he’s tugging his boots on at the door, someone knocks on it, a muffled sound like they’re wearing mittens instead of hitting the wooden panel with their bare knuckles.  
  
“Can I answer it?” he calls.  
  
“Peek out the window first!” Ma reminds, voice carrying over from the kitchen.  
  
As sneakily as he can, Steve nudges back the curtains and looks with just one eye out at the landing by their door. It’s Bucky. Dressed much like Steve is, in a coat and hat and scarf and mittens. His nose and cheeks are pink from the cold. Steve’s face breaks into a smile.  
  
He yanks the door open. “I was just coming to get you!”  
  
“Well now you don’t have to!” Bucky answers. He laughs. Around him, the wind blows and snowflakes swirl, hitting the side of his face.  
  
Steve steps back, opening the door wider to let his new friend in, but Bucky shakes his head.  
  
“You come out,” he says, waving his hand.  
  
“It’s freezing!” Steve protests.  
  
Bucky shakes his head. “No it’s not, not once you get out here. As long as you’ve got warm clothes. C’mon, I’ll show you how to make a snowman.”  
  
Steve frowns. “A what?”  
  
“Just _come!_ I’ll show you.”  
  
Steve doesn’t argue again. He resumes tying up the laces on his boots, pulls on the mittens his Ma had knitted for him last winter, and follows Bucky out into the snow. Bucky leads him down the slippery steps, out to the alley behind the building, where fresh white snow is piled up in giant drifts against the red bricks. It crunches under Steve’s feet as he walks, and he has to lift his knees up high with each step so he doesn’t get stuck in it, or fall down like the man on the sidewalk had.  
  
“We gotta find a good spot, where it won’t get hit if a truck comes through here.” Bucky squints his eyes and looks around.  
  
“A good spot for what?” Steve asks, still fully unsure what they’re doing.  
  
“For the snowman.”  
  
“What the hell is a snow man?”  
  
Bucky smiles at him. “Does your Ma know you swear?”  
  
Steve sticks his tongue out in response. “Does _your_ Ma know those older boys let you try a sip of whiskey last week?”  
  
“No,” Bucky answers, with a laugh. “But I know you wouldn’t tell. It was horrible, anyway. Tasted like shoe polish.”  
  
“How do you know what shoe polish tastes like?”  
  
“I don’t, I guess.” Bucky squats down, assessing a patch of snowy sidewalk close to the side of the building. “But it tasted like what I think shoe polish probably tastes like. ‘Cause of how it smells.”  
  
“Are you gonna tell me what a snow man is?”  
  
Bucky turns back, and smiles at him. His eyes go squinty when he does. “Something we used to do in Indiana. It hasn’t snowed enough, here, to make one. Since we moved. You need lots of snow.”  
  
“Okay. What do we do?”  
  
Bucky reaches down and scoops up handfuls of snow in his mittens. He shapes it into a ball, and then holds it up. “We start with this. Roll it along the ground, it’ll collect more snow and get bigger and bigger until it’s good for the base. Then we do it again two more times, and put those balls on top of this one. Then we find some sticks for the arms, and some stones and a carrot for the eyes and nose, and then maybe put a hat and scarf on him.”  
  
Steve giggles. That all sounds ridiculous, but he’ll go along with it without question because Bucky’s telling him to. He never really had a friend before, until last summer when Bucky’s family moved in up the street and they met at school.  
  
He does as Bucky says, helping him roll the small ball along the alleyway and it does get bigger. When it’s almost as high as Steve’s waist they stop, and roll up two smaller ones to stack on top. It isn’t as windy, tucked into the alley, so Bucky was right that Steve doesn’t get cold. Once all three are balanced and standing almost taller than Steve is, Bucky goes out to the main sidewalk and snaps a small twig off a bush. He breaks it in half, and sticks each half into the center ball.  
  
“Do you have a carrot?” he asks.  
  
Steve shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”  
  
“Okay. Doesn’t matter, we can just use stones.”  
  
“Where do we get stones?”  
  
“There’s gotta be some around here, under the snow. We’ll just dig around a bit.” Bucky crouches down to his knees and starts brushing snow away from the street.  
  
Steve copies him, pants getting soaked in the snow but it doesn’t take long until he has a small handful of pebbles.  
  
“Nice!” Bucky says happily, when Steve shows him.  
  
Steve feels his cheeks go hot.  
  
Bucky shows him how to arrange them on the top snowball like a face; two on top for eyes, one in the middle for a nose, and a curved line for a smile. As a final touch, Bucky pulls off his hat and scarf, and puts them on as well.  
  
“Snowman!” he says, with a flourish of his hands like he’s a magician.  
  
Steve giggles. “Are you gonna leave your stuff on it?”  
  
“No. Back in Shelbyville I would have. ‘Cause we’d just make them in the front yard, so we’d put an old pair of gloves and a hat on him and no one would steal them. But here someone might.”  
  
“Did you do this a lot?”  
  
“Yeah, all the time.” Bucky shrugs. “It might never snow like this again, here. So at least you got to do it once.”  
  
Steve nods. Bucky tosses an arm around his shoulders, and they look together at their creation, with snowflakes gathering in Bucky’s curly hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me [on tumblr](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/) [or twitter](https://twitter.com/turningthedials) if you want!


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